Zero Gee Martial Arts

While it will be sometime before people do martial arts within a spacecraft, eventually it'll happen--if only for sport.

I know next to nil about martial arts. But Newtonian physics would make zero gee martial arts a bit different, to say the least.

Grappling would seem to be the order of the day, when punches and kicks make one sail across the room from one's opponent, and the blows have less power because part of their energy is wasted on moving people around the room--although grabbing their shirt, an arm or a leg and then pummeling them with other free limbs would be an option.

What grapple and other techniques would be useful in a zero gee fight?

If the fighting isn't just for sport, knives, hand-hooks and garrote-wires would be useful.

Throwing weapons would be easier to use, because their trajectory would seem to be a straight line.

Powerful projectile weapons, like guns and bows, would be a pretty bad idea. While explosive decompression won't happen, having your only air hiss out into space would really suck. Accidentally shooting a line carrying liquid ammonia or hydrogen, or something else of the sort would also cause trouble, or death. Guns and spacecraft don't mix.

Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns trilogy has quite a bit of zero gee fighting giong on. It's best to be teathered to something, according to his books, because one wrong move and you are just floating there -- waiting to get knocked around. At least that's what I got out of the combat. It's pretty well done, though. I'd recommend the read for that alone.

It seems like mount & closed guard would basically become the same thing. You wouldn't be in bottom with guard, but neither would you have gravity on your side for ground and pound from mount. Some arm locks that rely on pinning a limb to the mat would not work well, but many would still function. Striking would have to rely on pulling an opponent into the blow rather than just throwing the blows at him otherwise he'd float away when you struck.

I think my SciFi strategy would be to take a high closed guard with a neck tie & try to throw elbows while hunting for a kimura or a chance to take the back & choke.

What grapple and other techniques would be useful in a zero gee fight?

Wow, a lot of posts about science fiction. And they say my posts are out there...

Without any gravitational body to pull you through space, you'll have almost no weight. Like astronauts, this will cause you to float based on your momentum at any given time. Floating and fighting theoretically don't mix. It is NOT the same as fighting in water, where you DO have some weight, and there is actually more friction in the medium (water is still thicker than gaseous oxygen). Drop your knife in the water, its going to float down. Drop it in space and it'll float in whatever direction it was last headed. Same goes for your body parts.

Most force/gravity based fighting movements like punches, kicks, and submission holds on the ground would be next to useless because there would be no gravity to take advantage of. Not to mention depending how long you are in space your muscles will quickly begin to atrophy due to being in a nearly weightless environment. Your muscles on Earth somewhat maintain their mass just keeping you in equilibrium with gravity.

Choke a bitch will always work. In zero-G fighting you have CLINCH, and then go for eyes, ears, nose, throat, and genitals. At least I would.

water is dense and thick compared to oxygen rich shuttle compartments or the near frictionless medium of space vacuum, so timing would be different in each situation. Hand to hand fighting inside compartments (oxygenated or not) would be possible without equipment...outside in the vacuum you would simply have NO way of closing on an opponent without some help from an outside force, like some form of personal thruster.

Which is neat, because NASA astronauts already have systems of compressed gas called SAFER units that they use for emergencies (if an astronaut goes Major Tom floating from the ISS, they can use the SAFER to possibly save their asses from floating into deep space.). You could develop an effective gas-based zero-g fighting exoskeleton from something like it, especially since the weight of the exoskeleton in space would be irrelevant. Huge space mecha armies, can you dig it?